When Tricia Todd, 30, never showed up to pick up her 2-year-old daughter July 27, Martin County detectives had a daunting task trying to find her. There were no clues as to what had happened to the young mother and hospice nurse.

Related Content

Detectives and the community searched for days, put out televised appeals, handed out flyers, and held prayer vigils.

Then, there came a possible break in the case. The detectives learned that Todd had been keeping an online journal for years, and the last entry was made at 11:30 p.m. the night she was last seen.

"When that came up, I couldn't read it fast enough," said Dougherty. "I'm like 'this is it, this is going to tell us where she's at or what happened or what led to her disappearance or her death.'"

Todd's oddly poetic last entry was mysterious - referencing an unnamed person, writing: "Beautiful one. Exquisite soul...there was something I didn't tell you and I won't. I can't. I'm afraid....it's simply unfair the power you have to crush my soul. I'm still crying. I don't have a right to."

Detectives at first thought she may have been talking about her ex-husband, but based on a reference she made to astrological signs, concluded it must have been someone else Todd was referring to.

"There's a guy she enjoyed being around, enjoyed his company; it was very much a one-way relationship, we don't know for sure," said Dougherty.

Frustratingly, the last entry did not reveal Todd's whereabouts, but detectives did find other chilling confessions about her ex-husband, Steven Williams.

"It sickened us to our stomachs," said lead detective Yesenia Carde.

In 2009, Todd posted an entry with pictures of herself posing with two small fluffy dogs, writing:

"Their story is long and sad. In the end, they died...of course. Charlie died from a kick in the abdomen. The story was "a car hit him." My neighbor helped me bury him while Steven played video games."

Carde said Williams later told them about the dogs and why he killed them. "One of them had relieved itself in the home, the barking, he just didn't want to take care of them," said Carde.

Todd wrote of a doberman pinscher she loved, that "Steven...dropped off on a wooded road."

And a cat, "Miss Kitty - her neck was accidentally broken."

Todd goes on to post pictures of two more kittens, writing: "Both were poisoned slowly. As I recently found out, putting small doses of household chemicals in their only drinking water is an excellent way to kill kittens."

And then, a picture of another small dog, Peanut.

"Beat to death with a crutch. I couldn't make an excuse for him that time. It takes a truly evil person to kill such a sweet kitten. That's when I finally saw him for what he was and left him. Steven stood and watched coldly while I cried my eyes out, cleaning up the blood."

"We realized what type of person we were dealing with," said Dougherty. "A cold-blooded monster."

Already a suspect, detectives zeroed in on airman Williams, stationed in North Carolina, and visiting Martin County to see his and Todd's 2-year-old daughter.

"At the end we knew he had killed her," said Carde.

But Williams denied it, and with no proof, detectives had a chilling new fear - two days after they'd flown him down for questioning, the man who they say killed everything in his way, was taking his daughter away with him.

"His daughter was due to go back with him to North Carolina, and it terrified us," said Dougherty.

So detectives bore down, interrogating Williams relentlessly.

"We had to tactically make her out to be the bad guy and he was the victim," said Carde, who said she beforehand studied techniques on how to interrogate a narcissist. "That's what he played on, that's what he finally broke on."

Williams finally confessed - not that he'd killed Todd, but that she'd drugged herself, passed out, and he drove her body somewhere so she couldn't blame him for "raping her" if and when she woke up. He led detectives to the remote Hungryland Reserve, where they did not find Todd lying on the road as he'd claimed, but cut up with a chainsaw, buried in a container filled with acid.

"I just kept thinking, how am I going to tell her mom?" said Carde.

Detectives also left wondering, after reading her online confessions about her husband, if Todd could have been saved from this horrific ending.

She had left Williams in 2009 after he killed all of her pets, but took him back a few months later, writing:

"I had a beautiful affair with my husband last night." Todd goes on to describe a heady evening culminating in searching a swamp for the wedding ring she'd thrown there months before. But she also admitted she was plagued by second thoughts.

"Please pray for me because the devil is attacking me. He is telling me that I made the wrong decision. I know that I did not," she wrote.

"I do not remember the things he has done to me. It's like they do not exist."

"A part of her felt like 'he wants me. I've been chosen,'" said psychologist Nell Collins. Collins said after reading her journal, she thinks Todd was a typical victim of abuse - that Williams manipulated her.

"She probably established herself very early on as a good, loving, caring person," said Collins. "What a wonderful target for a Steven."

Todd included notes from Williams in her journal, such as this one in 2012, Williams writing:

"I want you to know that I love you very much and I really appreciate you. You're so patient and loving despite my many temperaments. I haven't meant to be cold or distant....thank you for being such a loving and sweet wife."

"He said things like that to her after he murdered her and cut her body up, he sent her text messages like that," said Dougherty. "Do I think he's sincere? Probably not."

Investigators say Williams was calculating and cold to the end - striking a 35-year plea deal for leading them to the body, where prosecutors were enraged to find most of her still missing.

"We will have the benefit of utilizing the evidence we've discovered out here and I will put this man on a slow bus to death row," said Assistant State Attorney Tom Bakkedahl at the crime scene.

Detectives are left not knowing what might have happened if Todd had not gone back to Williams after she left him the first time. At the time of her murder, she was divorced and trying to make a new life with her daughter.

"He is truly a monster," said Dougherty.

Detectives said the FBI is investigating to see if Williams might have killed anyone else in other states where he was stationed. They also said his latest girlfriend in North Caroline reported that her dog also mysteriously died while she was with Williams. His plea conference is set for September.